Many different systems and methods have been introduced that are intended to assist a user in selecting a particular coating for a project. For example, a conventional method for selecting a desired coating may include a customer identifying a paint chip of interest at a paint store. The customer may then choose to buy the paint simply based upon the chip itself. Alternatively, the customer may choose to take the paint chip home and try to visualize the color from the paint chip applied to the target surface. One will understand the difficultly of picking a color based upon a conventional card sized paint chip.
In contrast, some more recent conventional methods allow a user to take a picture of an object and digitally retrieve color data from the object. This method can be particularly useful when the customer is attempting to match a coating to a previously coated surface that has been damaged. Additionally, this method may also be useful when the customer wants to coat a target surface with a particular color that the customer is otherwise unable to identify.
While conventional paint selection methods provide several systems by which a customer can select a paint color, there are still significant shortcomings. For example, conventional systems and methods provide deficient methods for visualizing coatings on a finished product. In many cases, in order to see how a room will look with a particular color of paint, a user must first paint a majority of rooms. Obviously, painting the room in order to determine if a color is acceptable is both expensive and time consuming.
Some newer methods have begun to digitally paint user uploaded photographs of rooms, or other objects to be painted. The methods however tend to render poor visual representations of both the color and the target of the painting. In many cases, users are left to old methods of using small paint chips to determine the color or finish of a room. Accordingly, there are many problems in the art to be addressed.